SOMETHING SAID SOFTLY

SOMETHING SAID SOFTLY

Something said softly in the night

like a tendril on a windowsill

tasting the moon, a whisper, a word

that walked in the light without

abandoning its shadow,

a phrase with wet wings

dreaming itself out of its chrysalis

not knowing whether it’s a leaf or a dragonfly

until the whole tree wakes up beside it,

something sought but rarely said

saturated with the meaningless life of meaning

that could touch space like flesh

and make it feel the thrill of new eyes

running down its arm like tears.

And it’s not that I want

to unsay the night or God

to define myself as a human,

and it’s of little moment to me,

seed on the wind,

what worlds are born of my words,

what ends, what begins,

what comes of what I cannot say,

but I want to say something

with the savour of time in it

that’s worth living for a little more each day

like a small tree rooted like a thought

in a crevasse of eternity,

greening the moon.

Late at night, in the darkness,

while the silence is off preserving something,

and all I can hear is your breath

off in the distance like an ocean,

I want to unpack my vagrant heart

like a patched guitar-case,

a grave-robber in a pyramid,

and attune my afterlife

to the key of this one

in such a way

I can play like a new star in Orion

to all the sad, beautiful fireflies of the moment

that hover over us like living constellations of our own

not bound to any paradigm of light

that can only be touched by a mountain of stone.

I want to paint something

that feels like the flower

that just brushed against your hand,

I want to be inspired by the mystic blue of midnight

like window glass fired in the kiln of a star

that has looked upon the suffering of humans for so long,

their atrocities and deprivations,

their terrors and wrecked joys,

compassion has turned it into an eye so clear

you can sip water from it like tears

that taste of the history of blood and wine

that danced alone like a vine at its own wedding

with a bride of rain that unveiled herself

like falling chandeliers.

Unfailingly, absurdly, obsessively human

in the shadow of thundering magnitudes

that feel like the extinctions of gods

that time has wheeled out

to the enormity of the gravepit

that limes every abyss of the heart

with the stars of a new universe,

I want to add one candle to the shining

in a folly of insight so illuminating

even the earliest galaxies

forever entering the darkness

on the threshold of their first shedding

could see it, something

so profoundly vernal and intimate

even I can believe in it.

PATRICK WHITE